


VIELLEICHT MORGEN

by eisenhardted



Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-18
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-05-14 17:42:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5752351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eisenhardted/pseuds/eisenhardted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even in the camps, sometimes friendship can endure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	VIELLEICHT MORGEN

There isn’t a word that can accurately describe how much she doesn’t want to be in that room. It’s unsettling, like another world, walking into a place that seems so normal and familiar when you spend your own days swaddled in filth and clinging to life with both hands. She’d never noticed the disparity before today. She’d thought they were all suffering in their own way, but she supposes it’s only natural isn’t it? For the oppressors to have the luxuries they’ve torn from the downtrodden.

She’s never usually in this part of the camp, purely because her work detail is in the infirmary, but the latest epidemic of flu has seen a shift in occupations. It’s left the same survivors pulling more than their own weight, or rather more specifically it’s left Magda doing her own work and that of a now sadly departed friend. Half of her wishes that it were the other way around, that god had stolen her from this suffering instead and allowed her some relief, yet the other is so stubbornly resilient she refuses to take her last breath until she’s old and grey.

“Herr Doktor.” It’s a quiet mumble, when she’s standing before that desk, her hands shaking as they grip a box of vaccination vials. It’s a delivery from the infirmary, one that had to be entrusted personally, but she feels like a mouse baiting a cat. It doesn’t help when he peers up from his papers and smiles. It’s the most sinister thing she’s seen in a long time, that facade of courtesy laced with a charismatic kind of evil that you never truly understand until you’ve faced it head on.

“Danke.” Is the reply that follows and it’s enough to make her uncomfortable. She’d rather he looked right through her than at her, at least that way she could pretend he wasn’t concocting new and unusual ways to steal her soul and hand it to the devil himself. Her hands are still shaking when they hand over the box, the gentle clink of glass against glass piercing an otherwise silent room. Her reward comes in the form of chocolate, her stomach rumbling despite her conscience telling her to refuse. Their fingertips touch and it means too much, a bitterness tainting whatever sugared confection she’s put into her mouth.

She’s quick to leave when her task is done, a nod of parting given as she steps back and begins to tear from that otherworldly office, her footsteps swift and her gaze downcast. She wants to be out of there so quickly, she doesn’t notice the boy she ploughs right into, doesn’t notice the familiarity in his huff of protest until those doe eyes flick upwards and drink in the sight of a boy she hasn’t seen in years. “Max?” The word topples out without meaning to, a name given but not the name used.

“Erik.” He corrects, although both are accurate. Nobody outside of his Mama had called him Max in here and now she too was gone, much like his Papa. The thought is bitter, the gentle gnaw of grief still gripping every fiber of his being, but he doesn’t blame Magda for that. How could he? She wasn’t the one who had backed him into a corner, much less the one that had let his own inability to save her pull the trigger.

She doesn’t know what to say when they’re caught in that strange little stalemate. It’s too close for comfort under the watchful eye of Schmidt, but at the same time…she can’t dismiss the little bit of hope offered by someone that is a kindred spirit in all of this. Her German is still appalling, the snippets she knows only enough to stop her from getting shot needlessly, but her sentiment is universal she thinks, when her hand reaches forwards to give his a reassuring squeeze.

I’m sorry for your mother. Her eyes will say. I’m sorry you’re here. She’d hug him if she could, wind those bony bruised arms around him and just remind him that somebody still cares beyond the gilded cage he’s been thrust into. She isn’t so foolish or so reckless, but she is fearless when it comes to raising that hand and kissing the back of it. “Vielleicht morgen.” She whispers out cryptically. Maybe tomorrow this nightmare will be over. Maybe tomorrow they’ll both be free.

Erik wishes it were that simple, but he’s not cruel enough to dismiss her optimism. If that’s what she needs to get through the day, he won’t deny it her. Casting a cautionary glance at the Doctor and the gaze that seems a little too intensely interested in this exchange, he’s quick to grasp her shoulders, to bring his forehead to her own and paint on the bravest smile he can muster. “Vielleicht.” He repeats her word, then gives her a shove, the kind that tells her to get out while she still can. Magda doesn’t realise what she’s walking into and he doesn’t want her to end up like his mother.

She doesn’t budge, not at first, soft curls peeking out from beneath her headscarf as she remains locked in that tentative exchange. It means more now than it ever did in the playground, but perhaps not enough to act on. It’s a deep rooted sort of feeling, a kind of warmth and concern that encapsulates her very existence. “Bądź bezpieczny.” She tells him in her own tongue. Stay Safe. It’s quiet, uttered only for him as she kisses his cheek, before that little connection is severed entirely and she makes a hasty retreat.

Erik swallows his own shock at the action, his fingers raising to touch the spot warm lips had just grazed. In a perfect world, he might’ve returned the favour. Hell a few years ago, he might’ve pulled faces and denied all knowledge of it - but this is a comfort he sorely needs, a gift given for which there was no provocation. It’s a dizzying sort of realisation, a kind of warmth tingling in her hands until he looks up once more and feels his blood run cold.

Schmidt is still watching him, that knowing gleam in his eye promising so much more than Erik wants to dare think about. There’s a scrape of wood as a drawer is pulled open, the soft clink of metal seeing a familiar coin dropped onto the desk’s surface.“Lassen Sie uns es noch einmal versuchen, ja?”


End file.
